Living with ADHD and Stimulant Use

I think I'm going to pick up smoking. Like cigarettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, there's a few things that popped into my head then. That'll come in handy when you're dieting. Yeah, 100%. Cigarette. Cigarette. Smoking. Oh, really? Nicotine. I mean, I guess. Nicotine. I guess. Yeah. Oh, because it just replaces the- I don't smoke. Yeah, it just replaces the... I do nicotine, but I don't smoke. Yeah, yeah. How do you consume your nicotine? Vape? No. No What Do I look like the kind of motherfucker that vapes Not really There so many vapers Two things that are all the rage these days with the young'uns on TikTok, it's vaping and trend. Next to the trend will go in the vaping. No, I do that. Got little chews. Little chews? Little minis. This might sound, because I know that there's a cognitive... Is it focus? Is that what it is? Yeah, it's focus. yeah yeah yeah how does that how how does that even work well for me for me because of my add um i can only get a certain amount of my medication in here in australia they won't give me more you actually need more so that's why i abuse stimulants because it calms me down yeah oh really yeah the nicotine calls me down everything that is a massive stimulant to other people actually it calms me down it doesn't hype me up it's crazy yeah yeah so caffeine how does caffeine affect you? caffeine just focus and calms me down yeah so I mean we'll go way back when in my fun days like you go out and you do a little little white rhino and everybody else is everybody else is like woohoo I'm like cool it's like I took a fucking Valium I've heard this before people that take Ritalin for like partying and stuff yeah but there's one kid that it does nothing for it actually does the opposite it's like that's me you're the one that needs it that's the one that actually needs it yeah yeah Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of cognitive things that can go with nicotine, but part of it's... No comment. Self-diagnosed? I guess so. One time I took Ritalin and fucking... I was like, this shit is going to be for me. Ritalin's shit, though, man. Ritalin's shit. I started on that when I was a kid, and all it did was make me a fucking zombie. It calmed me down too much. Too much. Because it's too fast. Adderall, never liked that. But the Vyvanse is good because it's time-released, so I can take one in the morning and I'm pretty steady all day. And then when it wears off at night is when I become a maniac. And my wife is like, dude, just go play video games or something. Just get the fuck out of here. What happens to you at night? I get super manic. Oh, really? Just erratic and do these tasks into that task. Erratic, doing really weird things. Really weird. What's the weirdest thing you've done? I mean, I can't tell you. I don't know. I'll tell you one weird thing I did. Something weird. I can remember being in London and we're staying at a friend's house and I started getting kind of a manic episode I was walking around, didn't have a shirt on, I was eating banana and I don't know why I just started rubbing the banana all over my chest in front of my wife and my friend and they're like what are you doing I'm like I'm eating a banana I'm like what the fuck yeah so I got back on my meds crazy you just get weird thoughts and shit it's silly it's silly stuff yeah so it's like it's probably how people sometimes behave on other substances yeah and they get a bit stupid and do dumb shit yeah because the ADD thing is some people think it's like a not that it's a superpower there's a funny very funny episode of Flagrant Tupac do you know who Andrew Schultz is? yeah I fucking love him yeah and they're talking about like ADD and I think autism and then Asperger's and they were just talking about like the Some people can like, they say it's a superpower. I don't know if you'd call it a superpower. But has ADD helped you in certain areas in able to focus on things you enjoy and all of those sort of things? Yeah, so it can cripple you too though because it can affect a lot of other things in your life where I'm massively disorganized, very forgetful. With people who, and there's a lot of different forms of ADD. There's like six or seven different types depending on what symptoms you get. But for my type, it's like I drop balls all the time. That's why when people ask me about shit, I'm like, just talk to Zoe because she's the organized one. The good thing is you can get hyper-focused. If you find something like what I do is my passion, so it's easy for me to sit down for 12 hours, just knock it out. But if I get a phone call, I'm fucked. I'm fucked for like two hours trying to get back on track. So you're easily distractible, hyper-focused, easy to be distracted. but then the rest of your life is just a fucking mess. Like, oh, I haven't paid bills in six months. Oh, I just totally forgot. Because when you have ADD, if it's out of sight, out of mind, so it can have a really negative impact on relationships you have with people because you just forget you have parents that you probably need to talk to or you have, like, friends you need to talk to. It can be socially awkward from that connection type issue. Yeah, but it has been helpful for me because it can have really nice effects on your memory. Like I can recall stuff. I can learn something one time and own it. I don't have to struggle to learn things. And the medication helps a lot. Yeah Yeah And when you saying like the hyper would obviously having a passion for like health and fitness and all of that sort of stuff do you think that has in any way impacted how well you've been able to create what you have with Muscle Nerds and then all the things that happened prior to that as well? Yeah, 100%. And it allows you to come up with ideas that other people might not think about because you're constantly obsessing about this stuff. So you're constantly thinking about it and then you're constantly trying to make abstract things out of some of the information you're getting. Yeah. That's interesting because I think a lot of those, like the stigma around a lot of those sort of like cognitive or mental sort of struggles or battles or, would you call them a disorder? Is that what it is? Yeah, I'd probably call it a disorder, yeah. It's in the name. It is in the name, yeah, but all the other ones as well. Like I think the stigma around all those things are starting to change now. Understanding of them are starting to improve. The only problem is now everybody thinks they have ADD. Yeah. And I can tell you, as somebody who's had it since they were a kid, it's not something you necessarily want. And it's sometimes offensive to us when they're like, yeah, I think I've got ADD. I'm like, no, you're just lazy. That's me. Because whenever I say I'm like, no, you're just a lazy procrastinator. But I definitely think that today, I don't know, this is my assumption, that it's made us, for me, I have found like social media, We've got so much shit at our disposal. It has probably made my attention worse with a lot of other kids as well, like YouTube, podcasts, social media, Instagram. Everything's there and we're always chopping and changing our focus. So even when I sit down, I play a bit of guitar and try to learn. I do 10 minutes and then I'm doing something else. And I'm like, I can't fucking focus for 30 minutes. I'm trying to learn this little bit of music or whatever. You're right, man. You're right. It's the way that everyone's being conditioned to have no attention span. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been my life the whole time. Like you start projects you never finish. And, you know, I bought a guitar. I'm going to learn how that lasted a week. And then I gave up on that. I was like, well, what's the next cool thing? So you're always chasing shiny nickels. Yeah. And you can't help it. And you're not trying to do that. And you're not trying to disappoint people in certain areas. It's just part of your mental state. How you think. Can't really change it.